I love it. This is what I always end up dong to my houses. This is how my current one ended up after our fire, July of '12. Note the burned up 660 Rally still in the foreground. It literally stayed there and I built the new house around it.

I'm really glad that I'm able to hand this project off to Chris. It's so nice to know that there's some progress being made on my bike while I'm working on it's new home.

I flew back to NYC last week to pack up my shop and drive it to Portland. Moving is the reckoning, the absolute accounting of all that you've acquired over time. All the things you've stuffed into corners or not seen or used are boxed and moved and in some cases just noticed for the first time. It is also a time to look at your various projects and consider them.

I had a lot to consider.

It took me three days a few weeks back to pack everything onto pallets, two more days to palletize the machines and then one big day with friends to load it onto the truck.

There's four motorcycles in there along with a mill and lathe. And a bunch of other stuff. My baseless and endless optimism sort of guessed the cost of the move to be around $2-3000 and after one tank a diesel it became quickly apparent that I was living in a fantasy land.

Price to rent a 26' box truck: $2300
Price of fuel for 3000 miles: $2644
Having your shop in your own garage? Priceless? Um, no, turns out it has a price that's just north of five grand. :eek1

Yeah, that hurt.

The good news was that I sold one of my CRF100's (I had a spare) and my benches and a belt sander which maybe covered half the fuel. I've never seen dollars roll so fast as filling a 50 gallon tank in a truck stop.

Anyway.

The good news was that my KTM had a new home on the other side of the shop in Chris space.

and the parts arrived from Christini.

It's pretty cool stuff and in looking it over with Chris we have some ideas on the packaging of it that will, we hope, allow us to keep the entire thing within the frame rails and to use the stock tanks. Our goal is to keep the whole system as stealth and stock looking as we can. As I still have to travel back and forth I'll take photos when I visit my bike but Chris will also now do some updates when he can so hopefully we'll keep the process moving forward so it's all done by spring. Tommy and Gino and I are tossing around the idea of doing a ride to Alaska this summer which is the only state I've not ridden in so it would be great to do that with the new bike.

Now I'm going to get back to work on my house and garage so this bike has a home to come to when she's done.

Going through the Christini parts looking for exactly what I need to do to get this all to fit! Lots of spinny parts and lots of grease. That's good, I hope we can keep all the grease on the inside and all the dirt on the outside!

My plan is to fit the transfer case directly behind the steering head and run a 2 stage chain drive from the countershaft sprocket, inside the frame rails, and up to the transfer case. To do this I will need to machine the case a bit narrower and re-angle the input sprocket reduction stage, both pretty minor changes. I think the rest of the modifications to the Christini parts will be minimal.

My current main task is to figure out the load ratings on the Christini headstock bearings and what loads the bevel gears introduce. My plan is to use the existing KTM headstock and fit Christini's bevel drive system inside it. To accomplish this I need to do some bearing trickery inside the head tube to accommodate the additional loading from the front wheel drive system. I'll need to make a jig to allow me to ream out the ID of the middle part of the headstock concentric to the steering bearing bores. I think doing a bit of head scratching here is well worth it as this will eliminate the need to replace the OEM headstock. Stock frame and headstock mean stock VIN numbers and no welds in that critical area to rouse the curiosity of a motor vehicle inspector. Both very important items.

I'm just waiting on a few questions to be answered from Christini and hope to make a lot of progress this week and next. So far so good, let's hope it all goes this smoothly.

>>Wow, a completely different approach from CJracer. Very interesting. Best of luck on the project.

Thanks. I guess different strokes for different folks.

>>How's the big bore kit and that other v twin project coming along?

The big bore kit is at a bit of an impassse. Info from Cometic is that we'd need to have a gasket made specifically for the bb kit. We also need a new cylinder casting as there is just not enough material in the OEM part for a reliable bore increase of any significant amount. That means about $10k in starting costs which is the main obstacle. It and the V-2 project are both in need of a Kickstarter proposal to get things started which is slowly in progress. Also the bill paying work seems to keep getting in my way. And I'm also doing a bit of work on the V4 project. Too many balls in the air!

The transfer case needed narrowing and after stripping all the parts out of it a bit of manual millwork did the trick. I also turned a couple of spacers up so that I can use the empty transfer case with movable parts to get the best positioning.

The placement of the transfer case dictates the chain runs and headstock mods so I need to be sure it is square to both the headstock and the output shaft so that the bevel gears mesh nicely and the chains run true. The better the alignment of chains and gears and the lower the frictional losses and the longer service life. Low loss = very good. Long service life = great.

I'm still in the head scratching phase for the headstock internals but have a couple of ideas that will improve the bevel gear shaft support/alignment and also allow for a center bolt that goes through the entire triple clamp assembly. The triple clamp parts do look quite beefy but I think the Christini design can be improved on a bit. Their lack of a through bolt allows some flex in the assembly which may be noticeable to the rider or not. This happens in 2 ways:

Loading of the bevel gears acts to spread the gears (and by association) the triple clamps and steering bearings. This increases backlash and wear in the gears and introduces some slop in the steering.

Due to the tapered roller bearings having an angled raceway braking loads also act to spread the triple clamps with the same results.

With a normal RWD bike there is a large steering stem that is very stiff in tension and acts to keep the steering bearing preload constant. The Christini kit has a lot going on in the headstock so there is not too much room for a through bolt and for a lightweight single cylinder bike the design without a center bolt is adequate. The bending moment that is introduced, while not optimum, is not enough to lose sleep over. Upsizing to a full size adventure bike (with luggage, oversize fuel tanks, etc) makes me a bit hesitant to use the system as-is. I prefer a bit of overdesign in critical areas like this and will be making significant changes that will result in a system that is very rigid with excellent bevel gear support and no bending loads in the steering bearing retaining assembly.

I'm waiting on a couple of parts from Christini so will be a few days until the next update.

Also the bill paying work seems to keep getting in my way. And I'm also doing a bit of work on the V4 project. Too many balls in the air!

Click to expand...

Juggle bitch, juggle!

Seriously, when we looked at it there seemed to be room for a clean install but this is looking better than I had hoped. I'm going to want a clear tank so you can see all the good whirly bits happening there. Nice work Cosman! You da man!

How much would a kit cost for the big bore? $2000 - that's 5 people. I think there's 5-10 nut jobs on OC to get the ball moving.

Great work Chris. This is a very intresting way of approaching the same problem. Hope you can get it to fit, then it'll limit the mods needed to the tanks etc. Much more user friendly.
2wd - 39 equipt 950. Nice.. Im interested to say the least.....